pat loughery

This morning was our monthly area Vineyard pastors’ gathering. About 12 or 15 churches in the Seattle – Tacoma – Olympia area are represented. As we were sharing what God’s doing in us, we realized that the Holy Spirit is stirring many – or most – of us in the area of evangelism. That’s fantastic news. Many of us are running Alpha; most are practicing what Wimber used to call power evangelism, all of us are aiming at some form of relational/relationship evangelism.

One of the pastors there who has a fantastic heart for the missing asked this question which has been bouncing around in my mind ever since I shouted affirmation to it:

“Why is it that how the church teaches evangelism today is nothing like how Jesus evangelized?”

How did Jesus evangelize? He proclaimed, in words and in actions, the availability of the Kingdom of God to the rich and the poor, to the marginalized and to the government officials, to men and women and little kids. He called people into relationship with himself, and through himself to the Father.

I wonder if our splintered view of Kingdom life now is what has caused so many broken Christians – those who at one point “made a decision(*) for Jesus” but have no connection to faith today.

(*)I find myself having a hard time even typing that phrase. It’s been so obliterated in the past; now it onlys seems to mean a one-time event that purchases salvation. Frankly, I make decisions for Jesus dozens of times a day. I decide away from myself and toward Him – when I decide to do all the dishes in the sink; when I sit and read with my daughter instead of reading a book on my own; when I flip the TV past the Jessica Simpson video instead of lingering on it “for just a few seconds”, when I wake up early and pray instead of sleeping another hour.

And on a previous topic, I’ve been asked in the “How’s your church doing” context, “how many people have made a decision for Jesus in your ministry?”. So far I’ve avoided my natural response (“hopefully, all of them, and in the last hour too.”). But I suspect that this filter may be slipping away…